We forgot to post this when it appeared in April.  Downtown Boulder Magazine posted a poll (page 37 of the pdf) about the best downtown coffee shop (presumably from this list of 18 shops).  (We posted during the poll’s run).

Here are the results (actual screenshot from the magazine pdf is below the fold, but we had the full results emailed to us), and I have to say I’m scratching my head on a couple of these:

1. The Cup (18%)
2. The Unseen Bean (15%)
3. Laughing Goat (10%)
4. Great Awakening (8%)
5. Tee and Cakes (7.5%)
6. Amante (7%)
7. Trident (6%)

I’m good with the top-3, but Great Awakening?  Are you kidding?  And Saxy’s or Sidney’s didn’t make the list?  And while I like Tee and Cakes, Spruce Confections is roughly 346 times better.   One of three explanations are possible: 1) all of 14 people responded; 2) Readers of Downtown Boulder mag are not representative of actual coffee shop denizens; 3) ballot-box stuffing.  Either way, more grist for the mill that public polls like this are next to useless, which is exactly what one of our commenters noted on the post announcing the poll.

We knew it wasn’t just us.

First, the facts: Vic’s is opening two new stores.  The “coming soon” sign has been up on Table Mesa for quite a while and another author here even posted about it on April 1.  The second shop is open in western Longmont (Nelson and Airport Rd), and I just happened to visit a shop next door a few days ago, so stopped in.  It was bone-dry empty at 3pm, but business might pick up once people know about it.  It has only been open a couple of weeks.

But, beyond the facts?  Today the Daily Camera wrote about the two new shops and the interesting news isn’t in the story, but in the comments on the story.  Here’s the first, and fits our observations to a T:

That is unfortunate. I cringe every time I pass a Vic’s.

When I was pregnant and ill, studying for exams at Vic’s on Broadway, it was all I could do to sit upright in the chair without feeling like vomiting. I sank back in my chair, sipped my coffee, tried to eat small bites of a muffin, studying – when a greying, balding, pudgy man began verbally assaulting me about my feet (shoes removed…socks only) being on one of the chairs. I was shocked by this and could not understand what kind of a person would yell at a pregnant lady for trying to study in a position that afforded her a bit more comfort and a bit less nausea. Well, after this rude man actually went so far to pull the chair out from under my feet, he told me he was the owner… THIS WAS VIC HIMSELF. I have never been treated so poorly, so aggressively in a public establishment.

I think all Vic’s patrons should be made aware of this.

All I could do at the time was gather my books and leave, and burst into tears once I got to my car. No one deserves to be treated like that. I hope no one else ever has to bear the brunt of such behavior.

Well, we only had that experience with Mike at the downtown Vic’s once or twice or 300 times.  Here’s the second comment:

He is a total jerk – he went off on my wife and her friend one day for having their strollers in the way when they were sitting at a table with kids. Maybe he hates kids? We won’t go in there either.

And another:

Yes, this has been Mike’s personality (rude, arrogant) since his Trident days. He has a particular fetish for feet anywhere near a chair. It’s no surprise that, with few exceptions, and for many years on end, the employees consistently display a similar immature snottiness.

One incredible exception: the red-haired dude with the hat and the tattoos. One of the nicest guys ever. WHAT are you doing working for Mike and Rob? You must laugh your butt off everyday at your coworker’s and boss’s attitudes.

And we could go on and on…..

He yelled at my wife and her friend too and actually started to move the stroller with the baby in it, and none too gently. The other people that work there (Community Plaza Vic’s) always seemed to be very nice. We don’t go there anymore. There’s plenty of good coffee in this town, no need to go to Vic’s.

So there it is.  Mike’s a prick, pisses off everybody, yet…. the Newlands groupies still love his swill and people vote with their dollars.  Good luck to ya’.

]]> http://bouldercoffee.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/vics-coming-and-going/feed/ 1 bouldercoffee http://bouldercoffee.wordpress.com/2009/06/17/reminder-you-need-good-people-behind-the-bar/ http://bouldercoffee.wordpress.com/2009/06/17/reminder-you-need-good-people-behind-the-bar/#comments Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:29:42 +0000 bouldercoffee http://bouldercoffee.wordpress.com/?p=190 ]]>

This is a gentle reminder to local coffee shop owners: unless you like losing business, do not hire teenagers to pull shots without adequate training.  I’m not going to name the shop, but let’s say that they appeared with a fairly glowing review sometime within the last 10 or 15 posts on this blog.  Over the weekend we got two different coffees from the same under-trained teenager and both were godawfully horrible.  So horrible I didn’t take another sip after my first and went to another coffee shop to replace my awful coffee.  I will absolutely go back to that shop, but I hope most owners don’t want to take the gamble that most customers will come back after bad coffee drinks.

Owners: train your people!!  Pulling shots is an art.  Yes, at times we’ve gone on and on about the different roasters in town, but we realize that personnel is probably more important than roast in the quality of the outcome.  Don’t have rookies working alone behind your bar if you want to keep your customers coming back.  They need to know about timing the shot, pulling thin, how to know in advance if it’s going to be a bad shot, etc.  Every quality shop in the downtown core (Goat, Cup, Sidney’s, Amante) has baristas that know before the shot is done whether it’s going to be good or not, and will trash it immediately if it’s going to be bad.  Hopefully that kind of attention to detail will spread.

Ok, most sanctimonious Boulderites already feel that title like Born Agains feel the Presence. But allow me to add some color.  We very highly doubt that any city in this country has the coffee shop density (defined as: # of shops per resident? // # of coffee shop chairs per resident? // saturation density of wireless radio energy per square mile? // whatever you choose, doesn’t matter) that has Boulder.  Consider that for a town of roughly 100,000 people, there are over 30 — perhaps more than 40 — unique coffee shop companies, most independent, and many more actual shops (probably close to ~100) when you consider that many companies own multiple shops.  Consider further that there are at least 5 different independent roasters in town, and likely more we don’t know about.  Roughly one coffee shop for every 100 residents, and an independent blog dedicated solely to talking about those shops?  Does that exist anywhere else?  Doubtful.  Personally I’ve lived in four other college towns and their coffee shops scenes don’t even come close.  

The interest in coffee and the competition to produce awesome results spills over, beyond the immediate borders of Boulder, and that’s why you’re lucky you live here.  Because in an environment like this, places like The Curious Cup are born.  The Curious Cup is on the corner of 95th and Arapahoe, just beyond the “official” city limits of Boulder and into Lafayette.  Ozo was (ok, still is) the best “eastern outpost” shop in Boulder, but Curious Cup, while not supplanting Ozo’s quality, has supplanted Ozo’s status as “quality of shop as a function of eastern milage from city center.”

The Curious Cup would be killing it anywhere closer to Boulder’s core.  That it is doing well despite its outpost location at 95th and Arapahoe (people do live out here, of course, but population density is far, far lower than in Boulder’s core) is a function of — I think — three main factors:

1. The shop is laid out well.  It is open and airy with perfect views out the south windows (all grass and trees in an expansive park — in any other shop in Boulder you’re looking at a wall or a parking lot). Ample seating for relaxers and laptop workers alike, including outdoor seating on the park.
2. A kiddie play area that draws in the stroller set.  Normally that would probably be a problem, but the layout has the “work area” on the south side of the shop, the kiddie area on the north wall, and the barista area in between the two.  A good 40 or 50 feet separates the two areas, and it turns out to be enough.
3. High quality coffee and pastries.  Coffee roasted by The Unseen Bean (which we haven’t reviewed yet, but it has appeared in the comments on a few posts).  On this front I’d give the coffee a “passing grade” by Boulder standards.  Not knock-your-socks-off, but well within the Boulder norm, which is high quality by default. I had one strong cappuccino (”strong” is my tag — not dry, but very little milk) and the coffee flavor was robust if not a tad burnt, but also not sour.  As a one-off, below Ozo, Cup or Goat standards, but above Folsom St., Brewing Market, etc.  Subsequent visits (and there will be many) will give the true indication.  They serve Morning Fresh Dairy in the coffee, also used by a few Boulder shops.

Who should come out here?  Everybody.  Who will?  Hopefully more than just the locals.

…there was Penny Lane. And it was good.

Penny Lane was inked into the memories of Boulderites former and current as the beatnik-come-hippy-punk hangout that featured venerable alt culture events and accouterments like poetryslams, open mikes, up and coming folk-punk bands, the obligatory singer songwriters, the not-so obligatory singer songwriters, terrible art, great art, Women’s Writers Night, among many others.

For some the memory comes from the olfactory; the aroma of petuli and cigarrette smoke that pervaded half a block in each direction along Pearl and 18th from the oddly triangular patio. Juxtaposed with Trident, Penny Lane was the eastern bastion of the late night coffee shop scene.

Sometime in ‘02 Penny Lane installed wireless internet, and there began a revolution.

Suddenly Penny Lane’s stained decaying carpets were graced with kakhi-clad button down business types toting belt-mounted cell phones and wireless-enabled laptops.

Free wireless brought a new crowd to the scene. Mixing of the old and new happened only for brief periods around 3 in the afternoon when one shift was departing for manicured downtown lawns while the other was just emerging from dingy basement apartments. Nevertheless, the afternoon espresso line at Penny Lane was often a sight to behold, the hardest-core bra-less dreadlocked tatooed child-toting Ned freakshow followed by a rope-belted cell phone-loud-talking real estate agent, and everything in between.

It was a lovely special moment in time, but like all lovely special moments they pass too quickly. The building owner, pumped up by the hyper-inflated Boulder real estate market, upped the lease beyond the reach of a humble coffeeshop/meeting place. To the disbelief of wireless-yuppy and hippy-punk alike, Penny Lane, seemingly at the height of its power, closed on 18 July 2005.

The spirit of Penny Lane endured. Of course one manifestation is on the web, where the original website remains here, and at least one other fauning tribute here.

But the real point of all this nuevo-historical spray is the Phoenix-like rise of the Laughing Goat out of the ashes of Penny Lane.

[Ed. note - the person who wrote this is now one of those "kakhi-clad button down business types toting belt-mounted cell phones and wireless-enabled laptops" !!]

And it was right downtown the whole time.  It’s been there for about a year now.  Ku Cha House of Tea is on 13th between Pearl and Spruce and get this — IT DOESN’T HAVE WIRELESS!!!  Ok, some might consider this sacrilegious in Boulder, but I know many of you are going to consider it a godsend antidote to the laptop libraries sprouting up all over town in otherwise fine shops such as Folsom St., The Cup and Saxy’s.

Ku Cha is a combo retail tea shop — selling around a hundred different loose-leaf teas and steepware — and a ‘traditional’ tea house with a sublimely relaxing atmosphere.  No laptops in sight, just a soothing lounge where you can write in your little notebook, read the newspaper, or just stare at the ceiling without being bombarded by the obnoxiously loud noise music of the Goat.  The quiet, laptop-free atmosphere also means the Ku Cha is generally empty.  Good for people seeking refuge, bad for the shop.  Helpfully they are doing well enough to stay in business because Boulder certainly needs some quiet spots, especially since the demise of Tea Spot.

they just taste better. I don’t know why. when I get mochas at most other joints around town, they often taste chalky. is it the milk or the chocolate? I dunno, but I know who has the best mocha results, and it’s the Goat. Them and [gasp-choke-yes i'm about to say it] Starbucks. ok, did i kill my street cred with that last one? well then prove me wrong and start making me delicious mochas!  i know a true coffee adjudicator would never adulterate the coffee with chocolate, but reality is sometimes i like to get some dessert with my caffeine, so i’m not going to stop drinking them.  i drink a lot of them, i’ve probably had a mocha from every single coffee shop reviewed on our blog, so i write from a position of great authority and know-it-allness.  Goat’s the best.  Starbucks is second. Seriously.

So Vic’s downtown didn’t make it, but they’re taking another shot in South Boulder.  At Table Mesa and Tantra Vic’s is looking to open a sister shop to it’s wildly successful flagship at Ideal Market.  We certainly ranted our fair share about Vic’s downtown and it was bittersweet to see them go.  And yet we’ve raved about Vic’s at Ideal (ok, one of us has? others on this blog have bashed; i like Vic’s Ideal for the record).  They’ve got the right formula and I admittedly dig the Newlands vibe.  We’ll see what Vic’s SoBo unveils, but if Vic’s stature in the community is any indication, the new shop will be worth a visit.

It’s kinda a no-brainer combination.  Add a little sugar to that food and a bunch of great flavors and you’ve hit the jackpot.  It’s the recipe Tee and Cakes has keyed in on and by all accounts, they’ve got it dialed.  Tee and Cakes custom and gourmet cupcakes have already made a big splash in Boulder.  I see their cupcakes all over the place and routinely hear folks talking about a “great new cupcake shop just off of Pearl and 14th.”  And as a bonus for you Boulder vegans, they’ve got vegan cupcakes.  One of the very few locations in Boulder to offer that, and they’re incredible.  The coffee is coming along and I’ve noticed that over the last few weeks it’s become way more consistent and balanced.  Hoping this trend will continue.
Food: 9
Coffee: 6

As noted in a previous blog, Sidney’s Coffee Shop recently changed hands.  Matt and Heidi are at the helm now, and while we’ll certainly miss Trish, we’re stoked to support the passionate new owners.  Whether you’ve experienced it firsthand or read about it here, Sidney’s has some of the most exceptional service in all of Boulder’s coffee houses.  We also thoroughly enjoy their coffee (Conscious Coffee) and applaud their dedication, care and pursuit of consistently excellent coffee.  And their food options, which I’ve just begun to sample, is top notch.  Split pea curry soup (vegan and gluten free) is phenomenal.  Whether you’re a regular or not, it’s time to check out one of Boulder’s longest running coffee houses and give a nod to two great new owners.
Coffee: 9
Food: 8